The present invention relates to a garment for the medical monitoring of a subject.
The medical monitoring of persons undergoing their usual activities or in their usual situations is useful in many cases, where the monitoring means must not disrupt or disturb the subject's life, for example during clinical trials for novel therapeutic means or methods and also in the case of the elderly, the state of health of whom it is desired to monitor, remotely, in their natural way of life in order to maintain their autonomy as long as possible.
In other applications, both medical surveillance and medical assistance have to be almost permanent when the patient is exposed to a dangerous situation that may occur randomly in his activity or his situation and may require prompt assistance. Such cases occur, for example, with individuals in a high-risk situation (fire fighters, military personnel on missions, maintenance personnel in high-risk installations, top sportsmen, etc.) or with newborns at risk of sudden infant death, or young children suffering from cardio-respiratory disorders.
Quasi-continuous medical monitoring requires the lasting attachment on to the patient, of biomedical sensors relating to the disorder or the risk being monitored. For example, cardio-respiratory functions are very frequently monitored by means of electrocardiograms (ECG) and respiratory measurements. The corresponding sensors may be an impediment to the patient if they are bulky or heavy, or difficult to take out on oneself during the medical monitoring phases, and their power supply means (generally batteries) may be heavy or bulky. Solutions have been proposed to reduce the impediment due to the sensors, to the batteries or cells, and to the data processing modules that are associated therewith and attached to the patient by fastening the sensors and the modules to a garment that the patient slips on and wears throughout his monitored activities (WO-A-99/64657).
These known solutions have the drawback of generally using electrodes bonded to the skin in order to take the electrocardiograms (ECGs). Bonded electrodes provide good electrocardiographic signal quality, but a period of installation on the patient is required, and they cause skin reactions and have to be periodically changed. Bonded electrodes are therefore not suitable for the above mentioned patients, such as infants, and for exposed personnel for example.
It has also been proposed to incorporate electrodes into an elastic garment worn by the patient, but the garment, although flexible and elastic per se, is restricted by the conducting cables that run through it, since these cables are not elastic (U.S. Pat. No. 6,080,690 and WO-A-01/02052). This results in a certain lack of comfort and often electrodes are incorrectly applied on the patient's skin.
In addition, the conducting cables and their connections constitute areas of increased thickness in the garment which may cause irritations, in particular on the delicate skin of newborns, and on adults if external loads are applied to the body at points where these conducting cables pass.
The electric power supply for the sensors also poses problems: the cells or batteries generally used have to be changed or recharged periodically, which requires maintenance operations over the course of long-duration medical monitoring, which operations are liable to interrupt this monitoring.
In devices currently available for monitoring infants, sensors are fixed to a garment or bonded to the baby's skin, and an electrical cable connects the garment worn by the baby to a nearby external module that delivers the power and receives the data from the sensors. This cable link constitutes an impediment and a hazard to the baby.